105: The Trick to the Perfect Response That Stops a Crisis

Do you know what I find to be even more confusing than the premise behind it's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? Is this idea that people aren't completely enthralled and entertained by social media, especially following a story trending on Twitter. There is no better treat. Two online kerfuffles in need of a PR response that I have never witnessed before in my career as a communicator. One story involved a playbook rapid response, the other, well, there was a response, but for being played, everyone is talking specifically about a scene. That scene, as it's been referenced in your movie, involving Rudy Giuliani. And Giuliani himself has been talking about it as well. We can't show the clip. It's not morning TV friendly. This week on the podcast, the trick to the Perfect Response that Stops a Crisis let's discuss the architecture behind the perfect PR response so you can get ahead of the story about anything that happens with your organization rather than behind it. The three things we're going to break down today on the podcast we're going to break down the chain of events that leads to a crisis. We're going to discuss the reasons organizations face an issue or a crisis when they fail to respond properly. And what kind of response is the best kind in crisis for right now, for bringing order, especially in this chaotic ecosystem called online media. These are the new rules for reputation management for organizations, for business leaders, communicators, politicians like mayors, yogs, amaz. I here to defend America's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. What was an innocent sexy time encounter between a consenting man and my 15 year old daughter have been turned into something disgusting by fake news media. Oh Rudy. He always thinks he's bulletproof. Now I'm not aware of anyone who considers themselves to be bulletproof when it comes to managing an organizational issue, much less a crisis. But to do that, you need to know what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. Using what type of media. Now, the online media ecosystem makes it very difficult to navigate the rough media waters, especially on social media. One wrong statement, one wrong word and you take on water fast. Now, I've been working in communications from fax machines to Facebook, and I understand how stressful and overwhelming it can feel, especially if you're the head of an organization. If you are the face of an organization, when it goes sour, it all goes sour on you and your name. And it's also difficult if you're that communicator, watching your organization and its leaders flail in these rough waters so it's important to note that not every crisis is alike. Sometimes that makes it worse. Right. Even more stressful. So even though people may know me for crisis communications, I view myself as more of a pre crisis communicator or a crisis prevention communicator. But that's not as fun to say. But behind that, what I mean is I spot the reasons why a crisis happens and I find ways for my clients, well, and you, the listeners, to prevent them. A crisis is typically that major occurrence that oftentimes has potentially negative outcomes. But before you get there to that crisis, you have a few stops along the way. So first, let's break down the chain of events that leads to a crisis. It doesn't start often with a crisis. It starts with the risk. Note the risks of your organization. If you work for an organization right now, if you're the head of one or you own a business, everyone has a risk. Risks lead to the issues and issues lead to a crisis. A risk can cause an issue. An issue can cause a crisis. So if an organization is in crisis mode, then there's a good chance they weren't identifying the risks that that led to the issues that led to the crisis. So right now, if you are in the sound of my voice, you hear my voice, think about the risks of your business or organization. Think about the issues, the potential issues that could happen. Now you need to have a response. You need to have key messages, talking points about those issues. Start with free writing. Start with just a basic draft of what the issues are. When I worked for the cruise line industries, the issues were easy. It was crime, it was foreign flags, it was discharge. It was the same issues. So I had to draft talking points in advance, you know, the key messages about all those issues. So when the issue did come up or there was a potential crisis, well, you had a response at the ready. It wasn't your bespoke response, it wasn't customized yet, but at least it was there. You had already started it. If you are an organization that already has key messages for all of the risks and potential issues, well, then you're more than halfway there and chances are you're going to be able to respond to a crisis. All right. Second, here are the reasons why organizations facing an issue or crisis fail to respond properly. Well, one, they are afraid to say anything for fear of reprisal. They don't want the backlash. They don't want to have to defend themselves online. Two, they don't know how to respond. They have no access to a crisis communication expert, or they don't have access to someone who's worked other crises before in their organizations, or they don't have any key messages about any of the issues, so they're left empty handed. And three, the proper communication channels simply don't exist in that organization. An organization can have a blow up happen on social media, let's say Facebook. If one customer creates a movement or a dissident group that takes a social media to crucify management or its operations, there needs to be a like response, one that's online, ideally on the same platform. But if you're not on Facebook or you don't have an active platform, then you cannot effectively respond. So you can't create the perfect response if you have any of those three issues. Heck, you can't even create an adequate response at all. Now three, what kind of response is the best kind of response in a crisis right now for bringing order to the chaos that you see online, particularly on social media? Well, I mentioned two stories up top that I need to use to illustrate the trick to the perfect response. Did you think I was gonna leave you hanging on those stories? No. I was obsessed with both of those stories last week. Now the first story is the funny story is the brat story. I had to watch this film as quickly as I could because I needed to see the scene with Rudy Giuliani and where he claimed he was set up by Sacha Baron Cohen, the person who portrayed Borat. So there was a scene where America's mayor was in a hotel room, a hotel bedroom. It was a second bedroom with the young woman who plays Borat's daughter, whom he believed to be a journalist. And Giuliani is seen stretching out on a bed, sticking his hands into his pants out after the interview. Now this rather compromising bedroom scene was revealed online late last week. So it was during the run up to the release of the film. And it was a brilliant promo of Borat subsequent movie film, which I highly recommend that you watch. It is hysterical as much as it is cringeworthy, but it's, it's noteworthy so you have to watch it. But the Giuliani hotel room scene, well, we all knew that it was coming out. We saw snapshots from the video and so did Rudy Giuliani. But Rudy Giuliani does what Rudy Giuliani does. He fights. And he responded to the mortifying video clip on Twitter and he did a series of tweets. But here's his first one. He did a thread where they were all connecting so he could write Out a full statement he wrote, the Borat video is a complete fabrication. I was tucking in my shirt after taking off the recording equipment. At no time before, during or after the interview was I ever inappropriate. If Sacha Baron Cohen implies otherwise, he is a stone cold liar. Now, tucking in my shirt will be memorable to me forevermore. If you work in any type of media training or if you do interviews or if you are a reporter, you work in journalism, you've ever had a mic clipped to your lapel or had, or had a microphone back on your belt? I don't know. Have any of you needed to untuck your shirt to get it out while lying down on a bed? I don't think so, but you should watch the movie in context to see for yourself. Now, me, I did not believe for one New York minute that he was assuming that position to untuck his shirt. Oh, he was untucking his shirt, but not for the reason of removing a microphone. Not a chance. But you know what, Rudy, he tried. And Giuliani, he cracked out a rapid response because really, what could he say? His tact was just to go down fighting. And frankly, he had nothing to lose. Um, you know, because at this point where he is reputation wise, he really does have nothing to lose. There are people who love him and there are people who hate him. Today, the day that I'm recording this, he got pelted by eggs in the streets when he was in a Trump train in the streets. So anyway, Rudy was being Rudy, but believe it or not, it was a halfway decent response. Why? It was rapid. He, he put it out right away. He used social media, he used Twitter, he used the channel where he knew his stakeholders would be listening. And because that's where Borat, the producers, released the film clip. But also he was defiant now, but likely the statement was also a lie. But, eh, what are you going to do? All right, so the second story of the week wasn't quite as humorous. It didn't bring the chuckles as the Borat story, but it was still an important one nonetheless. Because it was so unusual. We still had a rapid response, but I've never seen this type of interaction play out. Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes interviewed Donald Trump in the White House last week. During the interview, Trump complained that he was getting unfair treatment from the media and that CBS News and 60 Minutes in particular hadn't been covering the Hunter, Biden and Obamagate stories. Stahl, Leslie Stahl told him, this is 60 Minutes and we can't put on things that we can't verify. Now, this apparently did not sit well with President Trump because in an unprecedented and unpresidential move, which is now presidential, he released the video. The president posted nearly 40 minutes of the interview on Facebook. Here's part of it.

Are you ready for some tough questions? You're gonna be fair?

I'm ready.

Just be fair.

But last time I remember you saying to me, bring it on, bring it on.

I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for fairness.

You're going to get fairness.

But you're okay with some questions. You're not okay with tough questions. You don't ask Biden tough questions. Excuse me, Leslie, you started with me. Your first statement was, are you ready for tough questions? There's no way to talk. No way to talk. Leslie, one second. We're, we're. This is the first warning. I think we have five minutes until we have the vice president step in. Is that about right? Well, I think we have enough.

Really?

We have enough of it.

I think we're ready for the vice president now.

I think we have enough of an interview here. Okay, that's enough.

Let's go. And that's the moment Donald Trump gets up and walks away. And for good measure, Donald Trump also tweeted a photograph of Lesley Stahl, and he said, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes not wearing a mask in the White House after her interviewing with me. Much more to come. Well, it did. He created an explosion around the story. So here we have one interview and an interview that didn't even air yet, and we already had a crisis for two entities, for two brands, Donald Trump and Lesley Stahl, and by extension, the White House and 60 Minutes and CBS News. So two organizations at a reputational risk. So remember when we talk about risk, how risk can turn into an issue and an issue can turn into a crisis? Well, what was the risk for the president? For the White House staffers, the risk was having Donald Trump sit down with 60 Minutes. The risk was having Donald Trump rolled by Leslie Stahl. The issue. Well, Donald Trump is known to LA to label the liberal press as. As fake news. So they knew the issue would be friction. Let's call that the issue. And what was the crisis if he got rolled, especially in the week before the election. So what did Donald Trump do? He walked out. And then he tweeted an embargoed video and released it on social media with an accompanying tweet. So social media, no surprise, exploded. 60 Minutes. The trick to the perfect response is responding. They responded right away. 12:47. Oct. 22 CBS News statement on 60 Minutes interview with President Trump. Now, what they're trying to do here is controlling the narrative by bringing order to disorder. CBS News did not want 60 minutes to appear weak. They did not want 60 minutes to be butchered by Donald Trump. Releasing this video. I'll just read the first sentence. The White House's unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter 60 minutes from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting, which presidents have participated in for decades. Natch. That's their way of saying, no one has ever done this to anyone us before. What they were going for was the key or the trick to the perfect response. How do you create the perfect response for an imperfect situation? It's this. Control. Yep, that's it. You need to control the narrative by assuming control of your issue. That is the word. If your organization is facing an issue that is leading to a crisis, your first thought should not be, what do we write? What do we do? It's how do we maintain control and how do you do that one, you have to know your risks. What are the risks that could Happen? CBS News, 60 Minutes, they know a risk. And Donald Trump, Donald Trump can pull anything off. He does everything, it seems, is unprecedented. And they knew that an issue might be that he was going to call them out. The crisis would be if they didn't respond. But they were able to bring order to disorder by responding immediately and they responded through social media. Now, a crisis is an incident that is usually overwhelming, but an organization that can rapidly respond on a social platform can get ahead of the issue as opposed to getting run over by it. Your response, when you need one, needs to be a corrective action. So let's go back to my framework. Do you remember it if you've listened to more than one episode? I'm sure that you do. Let's play it out in the CBS 60 Minute Response. The first step in my framework is own it. It's the first step in the crisis. That's where you apologize, you admit you accept what happened. You acknowledge any type of accountability. What CBS did is they placed themselves in the crisis and they tweeted out a response quickly. So they were owning it. In other words, they were grabbing the crisis by the horns right away. Next, they're clarifying it. What that means is a time for you to explain precisely what happened. And if you are the one who is attacked or at risk, then you put the context into your statement. This is where CBS did this. The White House's unprecedented decision to disregard their agreement with CBS News and release their footage will not deter 60 minutes from providing its full, fair and contextual reporting, which presidents have been participating in for decades. 60 Minutes, the most watched news program on television, is widely respected for bringing its hallmark fairness, deep reporting and informative context to viewers. Each weak. The next step in the framework is promise it. What are your plans? What are you going to do moving forward? This is what CBS says. Few journalists have the presidential interview experience Leslie Stahl has delivered over her decades as one of the premier correspondents in America. And we look forward to audiences seeing her third interview with President Trump and subsequent interview with Vice President Pence this weekend. There you have it. There's the three step framework and it worked. So we have an example of two incidences with four parties on each side and all of them really, they all did the right thing. They all had the perfect response because they were all trying to maintain control. Some did it better than others, some maintained more control than others. But in words other all cases, CBS, 60 Minutes, the White House, Donald Trump, the producers of Borat Sacha, Baron Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, all of them responded, all of them responded rapidly and all of them were able to control their messages. So the takeaways for this episode one, mitigate future crises by recognizing your risks, know your issues that can turn into a crisis and be ready to respond and when those issues arise. And two, use all communication channels, Picture a quiver on the back, everything that you have in there. Go social, go online and fight back. Yes, you definitely want to use your owned channels, your newsletters, your websites, your blogs, those are the entities that you own. But you're not going to have the numbers of people, the eyeball on the places that you own. You have to go to places where you can rent space because that's where the people are. Social media. You're renting space there to drive people to that initial response and then hopefully from that response they'll go back to your owned media. And three, remember the key outcome variable, control for business owners, leadership. That means equipping your communicators with everything they need to be able respond immediately. And leaders, when your communicators ask you to respond, make sure that you do, because if you don't, you're creating a vacuum. And with vacuum comes silence. And silence is the loudest response of them all. And it's sometimes the hardest crisis to manage is when you don't say anything at all. So that's all for this week. On the podcast. I want to hear from you on Twitter. You can follow me @Molly McPherson let's have, let's have more chats, shall we, about things like Rudy Giuliani, which is something that I tweeted about this week, and also the CBS News story. And also thank you in advance for leaving your review of the Confident Communications Podcast on Apple Podcast. The last two reviews that I read were amazing. I just happened to go there last week and look, someone left a review last week. Their name former spokesperson, but S P O X that's short for spokesperson. If you want to be in the know. They wrote must listen. Molly provides a wealth of experience and expertise in her tips and podcasts. She is cutting edge and timely with insightful instincts, topics and wisdom. All may benefit from Molly's podcast, especially communication professionals. I love that review. I have no idea who who wrote it, but thank you so much. Former spokesper and also from 49 Raleigh. The real deal. I love being called the Real Deal. I've come to know Molly through her workshops and seminars. I have learned from her at in person events through webinars and this podcast. My work has improved substantially because of her. She is the real deal when it comes to managing critical communications. When things go wrong for business, the clock is not your friend. Oh my gosh, I love that line. That is, unless you follow the strategies that Molly lays out so clearly, then you are able to take sensible, swift action with confidence. Well, there you go. Thank you so much. 49 Raleigh because you're saying it like it is. It's the Confident Communications Podcast. So thank you everyone. Who's left? Review and last thing please listeners, make a plan to vote. That's all I have for this week. See you again by next episode. Bye for now.