209: PostcardMania CEO Speaks Out After Hurricane Ian Backlash

Hey, good news for print Postcards are trending again.

I could not believe it when I read it. A Florida CEO for a postcard company is getting called out. She urged her staff to work through the storm because she thought it was going to be a quote unquote nothing burger and was being overhyped by the media. She even told them to bring their kids and pets. She said she didn't want the end of the quarter to be ruined because people left work.

Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast where you as coronavirus events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. In this episode I'm licking a stamp and putting it on a postcard to send my feedback out on the response from the CEO of Postcard Mania after she was blasted in the press and across social media. Welcome to this edition of the podcast where I'm discussing oh my goodness, is it something new? No, we've heard it again. Another CEO, another leader, another person who created a PR crisis and then used an often used tactic to try and get out of it. Here's a backstory in case you have not heard it. Joy Jandusa. She is the CEO of a Clearwater, Florida business, Postcard Mania, and not for nothing, a very successful one. So just to do a little shift on Joy, I don't like dunking on successful people, especially successful female business owners of small business owners. I'm one myself, so I certainly don't want to come out and attack anyone. And I want to. You know, when I was doing a lot of research on her, I was impressed. Jandusa is created this multimillion dollar business. She clearly brings a lot of revenue into the Clearwater, Florida area. She is a high school dropout. She went to an art school in New York and she admitted she wasn't a good student. Dropped out, but found her way into graphic design. She was freelancing, then eventually started working towards owning this business and she's done an incredible job, so I don't want to take any of that away from her. However, when you are a ce, when you're a successful CEO, especially of the magnitude of Gendusa, you have to have a healthy amount of ego. It's just a part of the territory. Same thing if you're a politician, if you're President of the United States, if you're an owner of a big business or a big brand, you don't get there without having some type of ego. But what can happen in many Many cases is that ego might go adrift and cause a PR crisis. Now, PR crises are a little different than like an incident. And here's a perfect intersection of it. We have Hurricane Ian, that in the crisis management space, the emergency management space is considered an incident. Okay? It's not typically called a PR crisis. I mean you certainly have to engage a crisis communication plan, but it's not one of these self made PR crises that can often happen for internal reason. This case, what had leaked out is the CEO postcard mania now reports. Some are a little sketchy, but they came from leaked texts, you know, leaked information. They show up on Reddit where workers were upset when they found out that they were being asked to work during Hurricane Ian. Now in many of these cases, and you know this, whenever there are important conversations like people being laid off in businesses, they have these virtual zoom calls. And almost every time these zoom calls are leaked because you're telling your staff something bad and they're just sitting there and everyone has a phone in their hand. So of course it's reasonable to expect that people are going to complain about it. And these messages, these missives are going to end up on social media. So apparently what happened is the Monday before Hurricane Ian made landfall, workers were gathered in a conference room to watch her address them remotely from the passenger seat of a car. She had said, obviously you feeling safe and comfortable is of the utmost importance, but I honestly want to continue to deliver and I want to have a good end of quarter quote. This was said in a video. Jen Dusa also said that she had lived in the area for more than 30 years and in her view the media always overhyped the severity of coming storms. I can get this, I think we can all get behind this that there is hype in the media. If it leads, it bleeds. Right. Like we all kind of get this. However, yes, there are storms that are going to be hyped. You know, the Weather Channel is going to hype storms, but hype is coverage. So if there is, I don't know, weather system or rain, whatever, they're going to, they're going to extend coverage. Yes, but that coverage is different when lives are at stake, when there's danger and it is particularly different when there is a significant risk of a life threatening storm and storm surge and hurricane force wind and heavy rainfall. Now when this meeting happened on Monday, the day before, Governor DeSantis had already issued a state of emergency and all of the media was stating that the eye of the hurricane was likely heading towards The Tampa area in Florida's West Coast. Most people understand and it's reasonable that forecasters can get the eye of the hurricane off, but they knew it was coming to the west coast and Clearwater is just west of Tampa. So this is an important fact because Jendusa used that hype, that height excuse for the reason why she asked her staff to stay and work. It was absolutely unreasonable for her to ask to do that. That was selfish and it was someone who was only looking at profits. Okay, now it should be said that Joy Gendusa isn't the only CEO who thinks about profits only and isn't the only shortsighted, selfish CEO. There are plenty out there. But this made headlines for a couple reasons. You know, one, again, it's one of these recorded virtual meetings. Two, and the optics weren't good. She wasn't even in the office and she was driving and she's telling her staff to stay there and work. And three, it was her quotable quotes. You know the term nothing burger, like that's a great term. That term like that has legs. So let's just talk about what she said though, in her response video. That's where we really, really want to focus on this. So when the story leaked out, it was, you know, first being reported on Twitter and it was by a labor writer named Jonah Furman. I had used his Tweet on my TikTok. So there was an onslaught of critical comments on social media. And, and once the onslaught happened, they announced that they were closing their offices Wednesday and Thursday. And one on Instagram, they had a post that said, to valued clients, our office will be closed Wednesday and Thursday due to Hurricane Ian. Our building will be transitioned into a hurricane shelter tonight for staff, family, friends, children and pets. Our remote staff will still be handling customer communication as much as possible during this time. Thank you for your understanding. That's a bit of a shift. Okay, so already they're trying to shift away from what happened. They're trying to diminish it. Now, if you can just picture yourself behind the scenes. So if you have a CEO, just imagine a CEO with an ego. What is a CEO with an ego going to do? They're not going to back down. They are going to insist that they were right, but they might shift a little. They have to frame it a little bit differently. Okay, so after that was posted, it is reported that management told workers they would still have to put in a full 40 hour work week, including making up any lost time due to power outages. So that of course, didn't diminish the anger online, it only increased it. So this was becoming a bigger story, as they often do when the response is botched. So of course we all know that Hurricane Ian did not make landfall in Tampa. Clearwater, Florida, the headquarters of where Postcard Mania is located, did not take a direct hit. However, however it landed south. We have Fort Myers, we have Naples, we have massive destruction, massive destruction in southern Florida. We also have at the time of this recording, 90 deaths due to Hurricane Ian. Over 100,000 people unaccounted for. Now, it doesn't mean that they're all fatalities. It means that they're just due to lack of communication and cell phone towers down. Many of those people are presumably alive, but many are presumed to not be. Okay. So we don't have a sense really of what the devastation is yet fully from a property and structure point of view, but the devastation from just a human point of view. This is a hurricane. You know, at the time of the recording, it's still getting worse. So her comments were incredibly selfish and short sighted. So but let's just look now at the response and what she did and let's point out some of the good things about it too. And the not so good. Now, in the days following the response, I believe it came out on Friday, Postcard Mania released a press release, shared it through cision and it was widely distributed. Now that was a good move. That was a good move. If you are embroiled in a controversy, in a crisis, sending out a release with your response is a good move. And also just ace move in that press release, there's a statement there, all the share buttons that they put on there for it to be shared. But also embedded was a video direct from the CEO. Those are all tactics straight out of my book. Indestructible, straight out of it. I love that tactic. Okay, that's, that's where it ends. Okay, before we dissect the statement, the problems with the statement, let's first comment on the good parts of the statement because there are good lessons to be learned on just PR response. Here again, Joy Jandusa did not get to where she is without being smart, without being savvy and without being strategic. She's a very, very good businesswoman. But better than that, better than that, she's a good saleswoman. She's, she sells and she knows how to sell and that's an important quality. So she is, you can tell she is trying to sell this narrative and she is so used to being a successful salesperson so this is a statement of someone who's trying to sell a narrative. So we have a press release, which is fantastic. You're in the middle of the soup. You're in the middle of a PR crisis. Straight out of the indestructible PR playbook is you put out a release. Even better, on her release, she has a statement, she has quotes, we have a pulled quote, and we also have a video. I love videos and press releases. Even better, it is a video straight from the CEO. Even better, Jadusa has the guts to come on camera and speak her response. I love that. I love that. And that's where the love ends. Because if you were to go to this video and I have a link in the show notes to the press release, here's the title. Postcard Mania CEO speaks out after Hurricane Ian. Okay, that's all fine, comma, world should be more forgiving and helpful. What a juxtaposition. Oh, my gosh. All right, so that is the headline. Here's the sub. In the mayhem preceding landfall of Hurricane Ian, company communication between the CEO and her staff of 350 became fuel for a media fire that created additional distress signals. Look at that writing. So right now I am going to play a clip of the video. Now, I debated, like, do I just play the video and then interrupt there, or do I just play it out? It's a short video, so I'm going to play it, listen, and then I'm going to come back.

I want to address what took place at my Monday staff meeting regarding Hurricane Ian. We didn't know where the storm was going exactly. We didn't know when it was hitting exactly. And I was trying to calm people down, and I didn't. And because of that, a whole bunch of undue distress ensued. A media frenzy that we then had to make a priority to handle instead of everything else we were trying to do for the storm and for our employees. I have two things to say about this. My communication to my staff was inappropriate, and I didn't take into consideration how they felt. And I learned something from that for sure. I never asked my staff to work during the hurricane. I would never do that. I never have done that. It was before we knew the path of the hurricane that I was asking them to work in terms of offering Postcard Mania as a shelter. We've done this for years. Every time there is any kind of a hurricane and people take us up on it and helps a lot of people, and that's a good thing. Second, there are always lessons to be learned and I wish the world was a more forgiving place. I feel like we all wish that we have an open door policy at Postcard Mania. I really wish the person who is offended would have just gone to their manager or come to me directly and then we could have avoided all of this. We really dodged a bullet here in Clearwater. We feel very fortunate that the hurricane missed us for the most part. My heart goes out to everybody in Florida, my fellow Floridians, and we're here to help. We've always had a culture of helping others and we want to continue to do that and help anybody that needs help during this crisis. Call Postcard Mania if you would like some assistance. We're creating a task force to help and Our number is 800-628-1804. We're here to help, honestly.

All right, let's talk about some of the basics with this video. First, it's linked to YouTube. YouTube, owned by Google. That is your video platform if you want to share video that you want to be released, that you want to have appear in search results. So you get a lot of SEO punch, search engine optimization when you post to YouTube. Unlike governor, former governor Andrew Cuomo who released his video. I also mentioned this on TikTok. There'll be a link in the show notes if you want to see that one where his comeback video, which he released on the Wednesday of landfall of Hurricane Ian, that was on Vimeo and that is a platform that is not used for sharing. I had a lot of comments that people noted the Vimeo and one I just read tonight about a teacher saying that they use Vimeo a lot in education because it has less ads, you know, and they're, you go, that's, that's natural to, to see when you don't have as many eyeballs. So the Postcard Media, Postcard Mania's video is on YouTube. Curious. All the comments are turned off, which isn't surprising, honestly. If I were working for her, which I wouldn't be, I would, I would likely do the, do the same thing. She's just using that video to attach to a press release so it could have wide distribution. She probably thought that that was going to turn the story for her, which it really didn'. Now, so we mentioned the video description, we mentioned the comments being off. So let's talk about the video itself. You heard her sitting there. It sounded very casual, right? Like so casual. It's like you're sitting on a deck and you know, you're just in Florida and You're hearing, you know, the. Of the workers, you know, behind you. I don't even know what to make of that. I'm so torn on this. I had someone, Julie Parker, who's been a guest on this podcast. She had commented on Twitter because I had tweeted this naturally, and she had said how bad it was. It just bad form that she is sitting there, you know, on a deck, you know, with just someone filming her for a phone with. With a phone. And I agree with that. But on the other hand, I do think in this kind of social media environment that we're in, this more raw video starts to play. Well, I mean, look at TikTok. I mean, the videos that move on TikTok are these kind of raw, you know, you just quickly edited videos. It kind of works. So I'm going to give her. This is just like a net neutral on where she is and how she's speaking. I'm kind of okay with it. You know, having workers in the background doesn't really help it. But she's sitting on a deck and part of me thinking, is she strategic enough to say, hey, I want to show how calm it is in Florida. Okay. That there's no craziness behind me, that I want to show that there's no destruction. So if she was going for that, you know, maybe that. That's a little effective. That was a little effective. Um, okay. So I'll just consider that, you know, a nice touch. It's like saying all clear in Clearwater, however. So she's. So she just jumps in and as we're looking at her, it's clear to me. It feels like an employee is filming her with an iPhone. She's looking up. It's a very awkward angle. Again, kind of casual. She does not seem prepped at all. She's just not a great look at all. You're. You don't look like you're serious, a CEO. In fact, you look like you're taking the day off. Probably more effective is, I don't know, be in your office. Why aren't you in the office? Is there no power in your office? I mean, I'm sure there is, but that seems like a video that should have been in the office, even a casual one. She could have been in a room with workers behind her showing that people still respect her and are still going into business. And even if they're not there, she should have been there. How effective would that have been? She did not look prepped. Okay. She looked like she was speaking off the cuff, except for some well placed edits. I'll come to that in a bit. All right. So the first thing that she does is she just starts chiming in about the hurricane forecast. So already the tactic being used, and this is a strategy, this is a public relations media strategy called framing. She is trying to frame the issue that the hurricane was not heading towards Tampa, it was not heading towards Clearwater, Florida. That it was. And she was saying it didn't matter where it landed. Now, Joy Jandusa, even though it's claimed that she's a Scientologist and not that that matters, but I mean, maybe she is getting some, I don't know, message from L. Ron Hubbard about where the hurricane was going to land. Short of that, there is no way that she knew that this hurricane was going to land west of Clearwater, Florida, because all the reports and projections were putting it towards Tampa. It would have been right over Clearwater. I mean, that building could have been decimated, you know, or, you know, all the employees who lived in Clearwater. The storm went south. But she didn't know it. And that's important, that is incredibly important because she is basing her entire story and framing on that fact. And Governor DeSantis said state of emergency on Sunday. So that wasn't true. Now, she was trying, she said that she was trying to calm people down. It didn't sound that way. The employees weren't making it sound like that at all. She was more focused on work. Then you notice in the next part of the video is where she talked about there was a whole bunch of undue stress that ensued, a media frenzy. So this is another tactic. It's that blame shift. But she's also deploying a tactic that's used frequently. And I had mentioned this in TikTok and of course, I had some chirping on it, but it is used as an alt right tactic. Okay? And I had said in the post, I said, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. And I'm not saying this as a, as, as a political statement. I'm not saying because, I mean, it's rumored that she's, that she's closely affiliated with, you know, that she's a mega type thinker. Now, as a businesswoman, that's irrelevant. It really is. And whether she is or not, it doesn't matter. I only mention it because it is a tactic that is the extreme right. Steve Bannon, okay, who worked with Trump, you know, helped Trump get elected, that is straight out of his playbook, is when you frame the Media is out to get us, okay? That's where this whole fake news came from. You know, it was part of these talking points. It was very strategic. It's very politically strategic. She's not a politician, but. But based on what I've read on her and what people are saying about her, she is aligned to that. Right? And I'm mentioning it now because it is a tactic that's used, okay? And she was using this tactic and in a way, again, to shift the blame away from her to something else. And in this case, it's so easy again, to talk about social media, to talk about cancel culture, to talk about, like what it says in the title of the press release, that we need to be the world, not just Florida. The world should be more forgiving and helpful. Who said that people weren't helpful? That's why it's so strange. Who said that people weren't helpful? Okay? So anyway, so those two tactics together tells us everything that we need to know, everything that we need to know about her. She does not want to take any accountability whatsoever for what happened. She is going to wordsmith her way around it. Then at around the 30 second mark, we have a hard edit, okay? And then 10 seconds later, we have a hard edit. When did these edits happen? They happened when she had to make very, very critical parts of the response. The first part is that she had to admit that communication to her staff was inappropriate. It. So she felt that when you watch it and even when you listen to it, it's as if the employee stopped the camera and she had to rework it and say, I'm not going to say that. How about if I say this? Well, how about I'm not going to admit to that. What if I say this? So that's one reason why we have a hard edit there, because the whole thing was just riffing and it was just like. And it was just one take. So the second hard edit is where she says, I never asked my staff. It didn't seem plausible that this hurricane was going to come. This hard edit is right before she has to try and speak. She's trying to speak the truth there she is trying to get as close as she possibly can to the truth. But her own staff wrote it. I mean, they said it, okay? And more than one. They had it. They had a recording of it. So clearly she said this. The other piece of, of this, of this video response. And this is in about a minute. Like the one, the one. The one minute mark is she wants. This is where again, she moves into this hostile media effect, okay, where she really, really, really, this is what she really wants to say. And that's why it's in the headline of the press release. We all wish the world was a more forgiving place. Okay, Again, that's code for don't cancel me. It's code for woke. It's the same talking point that is used by extreme conservatives. Again, I'm not making this political. I have nothing against Republicans. I have nothing against Democrats. I'm an independent. I'm independent, okay? I voted Republican as much as I voted Democrats. I mean, honestly, I probably voted Republican more than I voted Democrat, to be honest. But I don't look at any of my work as political. But I will pick up on political strategy and political talking points and political pr. And this narrative is used often. I had mentioned it in the Robert Sarver statement. He's the owner of the Phoenix Suns. He said the same thing in his, his press release where he's talking about an unforgiving culture. So who knows, maybe she even read that release from Sarver and decided to go with the unforgiving trope that is out there. Okay, now the other piece of it, the final part that you heard is when she mentions an open door policy at Postcard Mania. Clearly there isn't. And really, if there is, if you're saying there's an open door policy and you wish that, that, that this one employee, she just, she diminished it to one. She doesn't know that it's one employee. She doesn't even know who leaked it. It could have been 20 employees who leaked it. If you have a situation like that, then you do not have a culture that has an open door policy. You may have it printed somewhere that says we have an open door policy, but clearly you don't because you wouldn't be doing this statement if you did. And again, she talks about the framing. We really dodged a bullet. Yeah, that bullet was a hurricane. And again, that hurricane was making its way towards your business. So when it comes to response, the takeaway from this one, if you make a mistake, you have to own up to your mistake or you will be slaughtered. And it doesn't help to make it divisive to make it political. Not that she was making it political. But nowadays, if you're going to blame cancel culture, if you're going to wait, you know, if you're going to blame the woke side or the press, when there's any type of blaming involved, it is from a playbook that you already know a significant part of the population is not going to appreciate it, okay? They're going to call it out and it's almost a guarantee that it's going to be picked up by the press. Victim mentality. You have to remember that whenever there's a crisis, there's usually a victim. In every episode, I leave one indestructible PR tip. This is one of these easy to remember tips that you can just slip into your back pocket to remember at all times. And it's this. If you are asking to be forgiven for something, or if you are asking people to forgive, that means that there is a wrong, that someone has been wrong, that there is a victim. If you fail to note any victims, if you fail to note the hurt by another person, no they will retaliate. And they may retaliate on social media, they may leak it, they may do lots of things. But nowadays, when people are hurt or victimized, they're going to let everyone know. And what you think is a Nothing Burger is absolutely going to be a something burger. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.