195: Why Your Customer Is Coming After You: Behind-The-Scenes From My Clients’ Pain

Hello, welcome to my office. It is a Wednesday morning, June 29th. I am very tired because I woke up in the 4 o' clock hour to meet someone on peloton to do a class together at the same time. Normally that would be okay, but I went to bed very, very late. So I'm tired, but I'm sitting here with my coffee and I am on fast Facebook at the moment because I need to look into a post that a client sent me about an activist that they are dealing with. They sent me the email last night and I happened to be on a run. So it's bad that I'm even checking my email during a run, but maybe it was after the run. But I looked at the email, started engaging with them because I thought it was concerning. This communicator had shared with me a screen grab of a Facebook ad, if you will. And from my phone, what I could see, tired, I may have been even panting, if you will. I saw that this activist group was starting to brand their initiatives. Now, activism in itself is not negative. And when I see it, when I see it in my work, I don't necessarily connect it with a negative campaign, but my clients do. So that's how I need to approach it is a client is dealing with a group of stakeholders who have collaborated around an issue that they want to bring light to. And in this approach, this activism of approach, they want to create a groundswell of support. So the reason behind this episode is sharing with you that there is a change that is happening in this kind of activism playbook. It's starting to ramp up a little. And it's not just with my clients. I'm noticing it on social media as well. As I have mentioned before, I jumped into the TikTok fray. And when I did that, not only did it create a new layer of anxiety in my life that I feel like I have to put myself on camera frequently enough that I have to make sure that I look presentable enough to go on social media. And when you work as a consultant, that's not a high priority every day that you want on your list. But such is. But this whole TikTok experiment has been amazing in its increased engagement that I see just from people. It's incredible. It honestly just blows my mind. People's replies, people's likes, people's comments in Instagram and people's comments on TikTok. And the replies, the public replies, but also the DMs, the direct messages. I would say ever since I posted this video on TikTok, about two weeks ago about the Honest mom situation. I'll put the link in my show notes for you to go see it. But it was. I just kind of delved into the mom talk world, and it was this woman, the Honest mom, who was her own activist, frankly, her own advocate for another TikTok influencer who swiped her name, swiped her content, to proclaim herself the Honest Mom. And I did a duet, which, in TikTok terms, that's TikTok partnership, if you will. That's when you take a video and you film a video alongside it, thus duet, the two of us doing a video together. And that video right now of me not saying a word and me just sitting there looking at a screen and putting some captions on there about consumer activism. That video right now has 1.6 million views. That's a huge number. That's a viral number. Is that number huge because I'm such a brilliant influencer? No, that number signifies the interest in a video like that because people are drawn into the drama, and they're not drawn into it from a sitting and eating with their popcorn, metaphorically. But, I mean, that's part of it. But they're drawn into it because they're feeling something for the victim here, the person who was wronged. And this idea of the victim cycle is an important one because this is where activism comes from, is this victim cycle. So on today's podcast, I just want to touch on this victim cycle. I want you to look at your business, or you can even look at it, if you want to look at it from an analytical point of view. The brands you follow and decipher, like, who is your victim? And I've been in the business long enough to know that every business has a victim. Every organization has a victim. Over the weekend, I was at my daughter's college. I was. I was on the board. I was on the executive board. I served on it for two years. And I had to relinquish my role as the vice president of communications. And I didn't want to, but I just had to for sake of time, because I have other kids that I need to focus my time on. But I really love the role because it brought me into the academic world, and it brought me into the academic problems. And even sitting in that role as a vice president of communications on this board, even in a college institution, in a very, very good college, by the way, there are victims. The victims are parents. And the victims could be, in this case, sometime we have parent groups in there that we were managing and people were using that activism mindset. And as I was sitting in this board meeting getting ready to speak, I thought, huh, isn't this interesting? I'm witnessing it now in something that I do as a board member. And in my business, many of the issues I deal with are activism attempts against the board and when someone wants to unseat a board. So I've touched about this in previous weeks, even last week. But I just want to just talk about this, this victim to activism cycle. So I had mentioned that I am just popping into this client job right now. They are telling me that this client that they're. Or not. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm distracted. So I'm reading, I'm reading their emails right now. Let me open it. I need to get back to her, but I need to tell her like, oh, I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you because I had to record a podcast first. But here's what's so interesting is what they sent me, my client sent me was something on Facebook now from a member. And this was an unseating of a board due to an activist campaign. And now they are branding the success of this campaign. They are promoting the success of the campaign with, I have to say, like nice graphics, not slap it up, their graphics like somebody who knows how to make something look good. And in this design there is a huge call to action. Huge. So in this call to action is a call to tell people, we need you more. We need you to engage more. Come and engage. You're all victims along with us. And even if you don't know that you're a victim, we're telling you that you are a victim. So briefly, I just want to go over the victim to activism cycle. I'm not going to go too deep into it because honestly, this is what I give my clients, this is what they pay me to do. So I don't want to give it away, if you will, but I want to give you enough to think about. Do you have a victim? And the answer is yes, you do. So listen and tell me. Actually you can tell me, send me an email, send me a message, or send me the entree. Point to me now du jour is the DM. I always read my DM's direct messages. Let me know if you have it. I would. I'm just dying to know other industries. Okay, so there's different stages to this victim cycle and I will say part of it is inspired by very well known crisis communicator who I respect greatly. And he's no longer working heavy in this game. But his name is James Lukashevsky and he's, he's kind of like a no nonsense, rough and tumble type of crisis guy. Like, just picture like, hey, this is, this is the crisis and this is how we're gonna hand it. We're gonna go behind the building and then we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna plant, we're gonna plant these envelopes and then, and then we're gonna send the envelopes and we're gonna send it to Senator Muskie and then we're gonna say that Senator Muskie is a crybaby. I don't know, I'm going off my Watergate anyway, but he's that kind of a guy. And so I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm inspired by that type of a thinking because that's really what PR can be. It can be down in the dirt and getting muddy to try and claw to your campaign. Okay, so let me just give you some of the stages inspired by the Lukaszewski model that I have worked off of, built off of, and added to. So because this victim cycle is one that I already worked on. And then when I found out about them, I went, oh, we talk about the exact same thing. So I'm just going to merge the two. Okay, so here's that first stage of that cycle. If you think about it, you need to think about your victim's feelings. So again, I go back to a college. Okay, I'm going to say a victim is a disenfranchised parent. A parent who comes up and says, where are the maps to this meeting? It wasn't anywhere. I didn't get it. It wasn't in my email. It's not on Facebook. So you understand that is someone who's a victim. So they're going to come at you. These are some of the things that you're going to notice in victims. One, I just said anger, concern, because there was a lack of a response. Where were the maps for the parents to use? There's disbelief. They have this expectation that there's going to be help. They have this expectation that there was going to be a care to service, you know, a service or care to that service. They're frustrated. They feel as if their problem that you've created has created stress for them and they're mad. Okay, so that's the first stage is just how they're feeling that quickly gives to this idea of seeking retribution. Okay. This is the idea of hitting back. If something's inadequate, if the communication, the effort, the operations, whatever it is, if it's inadequate, what they're going to do is they're going to pool together with other victims, other like minded people who feel like them, and they are going to groundswell. And what they're looking for is the guilty party who did what, when, where and how, and furthermore, why are you doing this to us? And they want to bring all these activists together and they want to get retribution. They want people to know that there's a problem. So what they're going to do, they're going to seek their own solution. And they may throw you off your game. In a lot of these cases, it's digital. A lot of these cases it's just digital. Or they'll just come up with some operation on their own. They'll create a website, maybe even create a nonprofit, or they might want to take over a nonprofit, or they take want to take over your business or the way they want to buy your business. There's just so many things that can happen. But they seek their own solution. And the next piece of it, the next stage is they're searching to feel better. How can they calm themselves? How can they smooth out the rough edges? They're starting to feel this. They might feel a sense of helplessness. You know, nobody's understanding the stress that we're going through. So I'm feeling it. And this is the stage where they start to create and draft a narrative. But this narrative may take on a tone that could be distorted. Their recollection of the history might be a little bit different than the facts. They're just creating their own narrative, if you will, and they're creating that narrative to make themselves feel better. I mean, think about it. When you recount a story. Someone last night was telling me a story and he told me a story, and it went on for about 35 minutes. And I said, I'm willing to listen to this story, I'm willing to listen to it. But I could have summed up the story in the first minute of the story because I knew the beginning, middle and end. I knew why I was hearing the story, I knew the outcome of the story, I knew everything about the story. But I also just recognized I needed to listen because this person needed just to vent their story. And they needed to vent every single detail of the story. And it was every single detail from their point of view. So I understand that. And again, my brain is always moving. I'm thinking, oh, this is again, just like this, this victim to activism, the activism, you know, cycle. Because at the end of the story, I was hearing what they wanted to do. They, it activated them to do something. I thought, this is my job. All right, stage four. The next stage is this, this mobilization that's going to take place, but it's going to take place in some aspect digitally. It will be in the form of a website, it will be in the form of a social media campaign. It will be in the form of a social media post trying to go viral. I was tagged in a post over the weekend of a woman who is complaining because someone on TikTok, I actually might link that video if I find it to the show notes as well. That's a big maybe. But she was slighted by a flight attendant who served her husband alcohol, but wouldn't serve it to her or only limited her to one drink because she was a mother. And that infuriated this woman and she went straight to TikTok and she put the airline on full blast. But you know, in this instance, she was trying to mobilize people, and rightfully so. Some of the people in the comments said, you're tagging the airline on TikTok, but they don't have a TikTok. So where did you, where did you have this comment? So they're starting to question the validity or the credibility of her story. And I actually believed her story. As a mother who has flown with young kids on a flight and being slighted, I have felt that pain. So I believed her. But I also sense that she wanted to create this activism piece to her story and the motivation behind it. So this digital aspect, they'll create a digital forum. It could be Facebook, could be Reddit, it could be a website. But they love the idea of a forum because that's people exchanging ideas, exchanging complaints. And they're also, again, looking for other like minded, you know, victims. And they are going to create social media posts around it and so on and so forth. There's more there. But this is my secret sauce that I give to my clients. Okay, so the next stage is our fifth stage. And this is like the victim's needs, like what do they want? And this is a real critical part of it. And this is the answer to the plan. So this client who I'm working with right now, one of these needs, you know, it could be closure, compassion, they want an apology. They want someone to tell them that they were wrong and they regret what happened. They want someone to blame. But what we're doing is an information campaign. So that doesn't satisfy the victim's needs directly, but it does it indirectly. Because sometimes you have to address victims. Like in the case of Daily Harvest from last week's video. They had legitimate victims. They had people. Now, a plaintiff just sued the first. The first lawsuit against Daily Harvest because a woman had to have her gallbladder removed. I mean, that's a legitimate complaint. So she needs an apology. She needs validation that she was wronged. But in some of these activism campaigns where they're trying to overturn or oversee or create a mess, we don't necessarily want to give them an apology because in many cases, like this client, we don't have anything to apologize for. That's actually with two clients. I'm doing the exact same tactic with two of them. We ain't apologizing. We didn't do anything wrong just because you think we did something wrong. But no, we're going to explain that we didn't anyway. But those are the cycles. So my call to action to you for this podcast is determine for the business you work for, the business you represent. Maybe you are on a board. Maybe you're even a part of a parent group or you have a small business, you have a big business, you're corporate, you're part of a business. In your role, does it help you in your role to identify who the victim is? Okay, so identify who it is. Everybody has a victim. And then the next piece of it is determine where are they in that victim cycle? Okay, and the last part of it is determine what can we do to help that victim. Do we need to. Do we need to do something on our part? Do we need to stand up? Do we need to fix it? Do we need to show regret? Do we need to apologize? Do we need to show a little compassion here? Or do we need to inform the situation? What do we need to do? So that's my call to you for this podcast. Define who your victim might be, identify who your victim is, and determine what you're going to do to fix it. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Hey, are you on TikTok? Come join me. I'm MollyBMCP. Or you can just look for Molly McPherson, crisis communicator. You can find me there. You can also find me on Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitter, as usual. Thanks so much for listening to this week on the podcast. We hope to see you. I almost forgot something. You can tell I'm not working off of anything on this podcast. This is clearly. I am riffing on this podcast. I forgot my indestructible PR tip. How could I? Here's my indestructible PR tip. Top of the head, top of mind. If you have a victim, you have identified the victim. You have determined that you need to do something. Your indestructible tip is this. You need to do it immediately. A crisis waits for no one. A crisis waits for no leadership that doesn't have a response at the ready. And their poor social media people are just sitting there wondering what to do. Your staff, based on the direct messages from the Daily Harvest folks, they are looking for you to respond and to respond swiftly. And here's the other reason why your leadership might be waiting. Because they don't. They don't want the blowback. They don't want the ricochet. But all the employees are dealing with the ricochet. The people who manage social media, the people who are face to face, front end people, back end people. Everyone else is dealing with it. So it needs to be dealt with immediately. Don't be a Daily Harvest and let your credibility crumble. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Hope to see you again next week. Bye for now.